Posts Tagged 'Copyright'

When you find hosted content that doesn't meet our acceptable use policy or another kind of inappropriate Internet activity originating from a SoftLayer service, your natural reaction might be to assume, "SoftLayer must know about it, and the fact that it's going on suggests that they're allowing that behavior." I know this because every now and then, I come across a "@SoftLayer is phishing my email. #spamming #fail" Tweet or a "How about u stop hacking my computer???" Facebook post. It's easy to see where these users are coming from, so my goal for this post is to provide the background you need to understand how behavior we don't condone — what we consider "abuse" of our services — might occur on our platform and what we do when we learn about it.

The most common types of abuse reported from the SoftLayer network are spam, copyright/trademark infringement, phishing and abusive traffic (DDoS attacks). All four are handled by the same abuse team, but they're all handled a bit differently, so it's important to break them down to understand the most efficient way to report them to our team. When you're on the receiving end of abuse, all you want is to make it stop. In the hurry to report the abusive behavior, it's easy to leave out some of the key information we need to address your concern, so let's take a look at each type of abuse and the best ways to report it to the SoftLayer team:

If You Get Spam

Spam is the most common type of abuse that gets reported to SoftLayer. Spam email is unsolicited, indiscriminate bulk messaging that is sent to you without your explicit consent. If you open your email client right now, your junk mail folder probably has a few examples of spam ... Someone is trying to sell you discount drugs or arrange a multi-million dollar inheritance transfer. In many ways, it's great that email is so easy to use and pervasive to our daily lives, but that ease of use also makes it an easy medium for spammers to abuse. Whether the spammer is a direct SoftLayer customer or a customer of one of our customers or somewhere further down the line of customers of customers, spam messages sent from a SoftLayer server will point back to us, and our abuse team is the group that will help stop it.

When you receive spam sent through SoftLayer, you should forward it directly to our abuse team (abuse@softlayer.com). Our team needs a full copy of the email with its headers intact. If you're not sure what that means, check out these instructions on how to retrieve your email headers. The email headers help tell the story about where exactly the messages are coming from and which customer we need to contact to stop the abuse.

If You See Phishing

Phishing abuse might be encountered via spam or you might encounter it on a website. Phishing is best described as someone masquerading as someone else to get your sensitive information, and it's one of the most serious issues our abuse team faces. Every second that a phishing/scam site is online, another user might be fooled into giving up his or her credit card or login information, and we don't want that to happen. Often, the fact that a site is not legitimate is clear relatively quickly, but as defenses against phishing have gotten better, so have the phishing sites. Take a minute to go through this phishing IQ test to get an idea of how difficult phishing can be to trace.

When it comes to reporting phishing, you should send the site's URL to the abuse team (also using abuse@softlayer.com). If you came across the phishing site via a spam email, be sure to include the email headers with your message. To help us filter the phishing complaint, please make sure to include the word "phishing" in your email's subject line. Our team will immediately investigate and follow up with the infringing customer internally.

If You Find Copyright or Trademark Infringement

If infringement of your copyright or trademark is happening on our platform, we want to know about it so we can have it taken down immediately. Copyright complaints and trademark complaints are handled slightly differently, so let's look at each type to better understand how they work.

Complaints of copyright infringement are processed by our abuse team based on the strict DMCA complaint laws. When I say "strict" in that sentence, I'm not saying it lightly ... Because DMCA complaints are legal issues, every requirement in the DMCA must be met in order for our team to act on the complaint. That might seem arbitrary, but we're not given much leeway when it comes to the DMCA process, and we have to be sticklers.

On our DMCA legal page, we outline the process of reporting a DMCA complaint of copyright infringement (primarily citing the statute 17 U.S.C. Section 512(c)(3)). If you don't completely understand what needs to be included in the claim, we recommend that you seek independent legal advice. It sounds harsh, but failure to submit copyright infringement notification as described above will result in no legal notice or action on behalf of SoftLayer. When you've made sure all required evidence has been included in your DMCA complaint, make sure "copyright" or "DMCA" are included in your subject line and submit the complaint to copyright@softlayer.com.

Trademark complaints do not have the same requirements as copyright complaints, but the more information you can provide in your complaint, the easier it will be for our customer to locate and remove the offending material. If you encounter unauthorized use of your registered trademark on our network, please email copyright@softlayer.com with details — the exact location of the infringing content, your trademark registration information, etc. — along with an explanation that this trademark usage is unauthorized and should be removed. In your email, please add the word "trademark" to the subject line to help us filter and prioritize your complaint.

If You See Abusive Traffic

Spam, phishing and copyright infringement are relatively straightforward when it comes to finding and reporting abuse, but sometimes the abuse isn't as visible and tangible (though the effect usually is). If a SoftLayer server is sending abusive traffic to your site, we want to know about it as quickly as possible. Whether that behavior is part of a Denial of Service (DoS) attack or is just scanning ports to possibly attack later, it's important that you give us details so we can prevent any further activity.

To report this type of abuse, send a snippet from your log file including at least 10 lines of logs that show attempts to break into or overload your server. Here's a quick reference to where you can find the relevant logs to send:

Email Spam - Send Mail Logs:

/var/log/maillog

/usr/local/psa/var/log/maillog

Brute Force Attacks - Send SSH Logs:

/var/log/messages

/var/log/secure

Like spam and phishing reports, abusive traffic complaints should be sent to abuse@softlayer.com with a quick explanation of what is happening and any other details you can provide. When you submit a complaint about abusive traffic, make sure your message's subject line reflects the type of issue ("DDoS attack," "brute force attempts," etc.) so our team can investigate your report even quicker.

As I mentioned at the start of this post, these are just four types of abusive behavior that our abuse department addresses on a daily basis. Our Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) outlines what can and cannot be hosted using SoftLayer services, and the process of reporting other types of abuse is generally the same as what you see in the four examples I mentioned above ... Send a clear, concise report to abuse@softlayer.com with key words about the type of violation in the message's subject line. When our team is able to look into your complaint and find the evidence they need to take action, they do so quickly.

I can't wrap up this blog of tips without mentioning the "Tips from the Abuse Department" blog Jennifer Groves wrote about reporting abuse ... It touches on some of the same ideas as this post, and it also provides a little more perspective from behind the lines of the abuse department. As the social media gal, I don't handle abuse on a day-to-day basis, but I do help people dealing with abuse issues, and I know a simple guide like this will be of value.

If an abuse-related issue persists and you don't feel like anything has been fixed, double-check that you've included all the necessary information and evidence in your correspondence to the abuse team. In most cases, you will not receive a response from the abuse team, but that doesn't mean they aren't taking action. The abuse@ and copyright@ email aliases function as notification systems for our abuse teams, and they correspond with the infringing customers internally when a complaint is submitted. Given the fact that hundreds of users may report the same abusive behavior at the same time, responding directly to each message would slow down the process of actually resolving the issue (which is the priority).

If everything was included in your initial correspondence with the abuse team but you still don't notice a change in the abusive behavior, you can always follow up with our social media team at twitter@softlayer.com, and we'll do everything we can to help.

If you are in the web hosting business or you provide users with access to store content on your servers, chances are that you're familiar with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). If you aren't familiar with it, you certainly should be. All it takes is one client plagiarizing an article or using a filesharing program unscrupulously, and you could find yourself the recipient of a scary DMCA notice from a copyright holder. We've talked before about how to file a DMCA complaint with SoftLayer, but we haven't talked in detail about SoftLayer's role in processing DMCA complaints or what you should do if you find yourself on the receiving end of a copyright infringement notification.

The most important thing to understand when it comes to the way the abuse team handles DMCA complaints is that our procedures aren't just SoftLayer policy — they are the law. Our role in processing copyright complaints is essentially that of a middleman. In order to protect our Safe Harbor status under the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act (OCILLA), we must enforce any complaint that meets the legal requirements of a takedown notice. That DMCA complaint must contain specific elements and be properly formatted in order to be considered valid.

Responding to a DMCA Complaint

When we receive a complaint that meets the legal requirements of a DMCA takedown notice, we must relay the complaint to our direct customer and enforce a deadline for removal of the violating material. We are obligated to remove access to infringing content when we are notified about it, and we aren't able to make a determination about the validity of a claim beyond confirming that all DMCA requirements are met.

The law states that SoftLayer must act expeditiously, so if you receive notification of a DMCA complaint, it's important that you acknowledge the ticket that the abuse department opened on your account and let us know your intended course of action. Sometimes that action is as simple as removing an infringing URL. Sometimes you may need to contact your client and instruct them to take the material down. Whatever the case may be, it's important to be responsive and to expressly confirm when you have complied and removed the material. Failure to acknowledge an abuse ticket can result in disconnection of service, and in the case of copyright infringement, SoftLayer has a legal obligation to remove access to the material or we face serious liability.

DMCA Counter Notifications

Most DMCA complaints are resolved without issue, but what happens if you disagree with the complaint? What if you own the material and a disgruntled former business partner is trying to get revenge? What if you wrote the content and the complaining party is copying your website? Thankfully there are penalties for filing a false DMCA complaint, but you also have recourse in the form of a counter notification. Keep in mind that while it may be tempting to plead your case to the abuse department, our role is not to play judge or jury but to allow the process to work as it was designed.

In some cases, you may be able to work out a resolution with the complaining party directly (misunderstandings happen, licenses lapse, etc.) and have them send a retraction, but most of the time your best course of action is to submit a counter notification.

Just as a takedown notice must be crafted in a specific way, counter notifications have their own set of requirements. Once you have disabled the material identified in the original complaint, we can provide your valid, properly formatted counter notification to the complaining party. Unless we receive a court order from the complaining party within the legally mandated time frame the material can be re-enabled and the case is closed for the time being.

While it might sound complicated, it's actually pretty straightforward, but we urge you to do your research and make sure you know what to do in the event a client of yours is hit with a DMCA takedown notice. Just as we are unable to make judgment calls when it comes to takedown notices or counter notifications, we are also unable to offer any legal advice for you if you need help. Hopefully this post cleared up a few questions and misconceptions about how the abuse department handles copyright complaints. In short:

Do take DMCA notifications seriously. You are at risk for service interruption and possible legal liability.

Do respond to the abuse department letting them know the material has been disabled and, if applicable, if you plan to file a counter notification.

Don't refuse to disable the material. Even if you believe the claim is false and you wish to file a counter notification, the material must be disabled within the time period allotted by the abuse department or we have to block access to it.

Don't expect the abuse department to take sides.

As with any abuse issue, communication and responsiveness is important. Disconnecting your server is a last resort, but we have ethical and legal obligations to uphold. The DMCA process certainly has its weaknesses and it leaves a bit to be desired, but at the end of the day, it's the law, and we have to operate inside of our legal obligation to it.

If you're a SoftLayer customer, you don't want to hear from the Abuse department. We know that. The unfortunate reality when it comes to hosting a server is that compromises can happen, mistakes can be made, and even the most scrupulous reseller can fall victim to a fraudulent sign-up or sly spammer. If someone reports abusive behavior originating from one of your servers on our network, it's important to be able to communicate effectively with the Abuse department and build a healthy working relationship.

Beyond our responsibility to enforce the law and our Acceptable Use Policy, the Abuse department is designed to be a valuable asset for our customers. We'll notify you of all valid complaints (and possibly highlight security vulnerabilities in the process), we'll assist you with blacklist removal, we can serve as a liaison between you and other providers if there are any problems, and if you operate an email-heavy platform or service, we can help you understand the steps you need to take to avoid activity that may be considered abuse.

At the end of the day, if the Abuse department can maintain a good rapport with our customers, both our jobs can be easier, so I thought this installment in the "Tips from the Abuse Department" series could focus on some best practices for corresponding with Abuse from a customer perspective.

Check Your Tickets

This is the easiest, most obvious recommendation I can give. You'd be surprised at how many service interruptions could be avoided if our customers were more proactive about keeping up with their open tickets. Our portal is a vital tool for your business, so make sure you are familiar with how to access and use it.

Keep Your Contact Information Current

Our ticket system will send notifications to the email address you have on file, so making sure this information is correct and current is absolutely crucial, especially if you aren't in the habit of checking the ticket system on a regular basis. You can even set a specific address for abuse notifications to be sent to, so make use of this option. The quicker you can respond to an abuse report, the quicker the complaint can be resolved, and by getting the complaint resolved quickly, you avoid any potential service interruption.

If we are unable to reach you by ticket, we may need to call you, so keep your current phone numbers on file as well.

Provide Frequent Updates

Stay in constant communication in the midst of responding to an abuse report, and adhere to the allotted timeline in the ticket. If we don't see updates that the abusive behavior is being addressed in the grace period we are able to offer, your server is at risk of disconnection. By keeping us posted about the action you're taking and the time you need to resolve the matter, we're able to be more flexible.

If a customer on your servers created a spamming script or a phishing account, taking immediate steps to mitigate the issue by suspending that customer is another great way to respond to the process while you're performing an investigation of how that activity was started. We'll still want a detailed resolution, but if the abuse is not actively ongoing we can work with you on deadlines.

Be Concise ... But Not Too Concise

One-word responses: bad. Page long responses: also not ideal. If given the option we would opt for the latter, but your goal should be to outline the cause and resolution of any reported abusive activity as clearly and succinctly as possible in order to ease communication and expedite closing of the ticket.

Responding to a ticket with, "Fixed," is not sufficient to for the Abuse department to consider the matter resolved, but we also don't need a dump of your entire log file. Before the Abuse team can close a ticket, we have to see details of how the complaint was resolved, so if you don't provide those details in your first response, you can bet we'll keep following up with you to get them. What details do we need?

Take a Comprehensive Approach

In addition to stopping the abusive activity we want to know:

How/why the issue occurred

What steps are being taken to prevent further issues of that nature

We understand that dealing with abuse issues can often feel like a game of Whack-A-Mole, but if you can show that you're digging a bit deeper and taking steps to avoid recurrence, that additional work is very much appreciated. Having the Abuse department consider you a proactive, ethical and responsible customer is a worthy goal.

Be Courteous

I'm ending on a similar note to my last blog post because it's just that important! We understand getting an abuse ticket is a hassle, but please remember that we're doing our best to protect our network, the Internet community and you.

Unplugging your server is a last resort for us, and we want to make sure everyone is on the same page to prevent us from getting to that last resort. In the unfortunate event that you do experience an abuse issue, please refer back to this blog — it just might save you some headaches and perhaps some unnecessary downtime.

SoftLayer has a dedicated team working around the clock to address complaints of abuse on our network. We receive these complaints via feedback loops from other providers, spam blacklisting services such as Spamcop and Spamhaus, various industry contacts and mailing lists. Some of the most valuable complaints we receive are from our users, though. We appreciate people taking the time to let us know about problems on our network, and we find these complaints particularly valuable as they are non-automated and direct from the source.

It stands to reason that the more efficient people are at reporting abuse, the more efficient we can be at shutting down the activity, so I've compiled some tips and resources to make this process easier. Enjoy!

Not only does this page contain our contact details, there's a wealth of information on our policies including what we consider abuse and how we handle reported issues. For starters, you may want to review our AUP (Acceptable Use Policy) to get a feel for our stance on abuse and how we mitigate it.

Follow Proper Guidelines

In addition to our own policies, there are legal aspects we must consider. For example, a claim of copyright infringement must be submitted in the form of a properly formatted DMCA, pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Our legal page contains crucial information on what is required to make a copyright claim, as well as information on how to submit a subpoena or court order. We take abuse very seriously, but we must adhere to the law as well as our privacy policy in order to protect our customers' businesses and our company from liability.

Include Evidence

Evidence can take the form of any number of things. A few common examples:

A copy of the alleged spam message with full headers intact.

A snippet from your log file showing malicious activity.

The full URL of a phishing page.

Without evidence that clearly ties abusive activity to a server on our network, we are unable to relay a complaint to our customer. Keep in mind that the complaint must be in a format that allows us to verify it and pass it along, which typically means an email or hard copy. While our website does have contact numbers and addresses, email is your best bet for most types of complaints.

Use Keywords

We use a mail client specifically developed for abuse desks, and it is configured with a host of rules used for filtering and prioritization. Descriptive subject lines with keywords indicating the issue type are very useful. Including the words "Spam," "Phishing" or "Copyright" in your subject line helps make sure your email is sent to the correct queue and, if applicable, receives expedited processing. Including the domain name and IP address in the body of the email is also helpful.

Follow Up

We work hard to investigate and resolve all complaints received however, due to volume, we typically do not respond to complaining parties. That said, we often rely on user complaints to determine if an issue has resumed or is ongoing so feel free to send a new complaint if activity persists.

Be Respectful

The only portion of your complaint we are likely to relay to our customer is the evidence itself along with any useful notes, which means that paragraph of profanity is read only by hardworking SoftLayer employees. We understand the frustration of being on the receiving end of spam or a DDOS, but please be professional and try to understand our position. We are on your side!

Hopefully you've found some of this information useful. When in doubt, submit your complaint to abuse@softlayer.com and we can offer further guidance. Stay tuned for Part 2, where I'll offer suggestions for SoftLayer customers about how to facilitate better communication with our Abuse department to avoid service interruption if an abuse complaint is filed against you.

The Internet community's rallying cry has been heard by the United States Congress and Senate. Last week, we reported that SOPA was temporarily being put on the shelf, but now Congressman Lamar Smith has pulled the bill altogether, stating that "until there is wider agreement on a solution," the bill will not be reintroduced.

On the Protect IP Act (PIPA) front, Senator Harry Reid also announced late last week that he's postponed the schedule vote on the legislation that was originally slated for today. In a statement released on Friday, Senator Reid went on to say:

"There is no reason that the legitimate issues raised by many about this bill cannot be resolved. Counterfeiting and piracy cost the American economy billions of dollars and thousands of jobs each year, with the movie industry alone supporting over 2.2 million jobs. We must take action to stop these illegal practices. We live in a country where people rightfully expect to be fairly compensated for a day’s work, whether that person is a miner in the high desert of Nevada, an independent band in New York City, or a union worker on the back lots of a California movie studio."

As a hosting provider, we wholeheartedly agree that counterfeiting and piracy are a primary focus, and our opposition to the bills drafted to protect copyright holders and intellectual property owners is in response to the verbiage in the legislation and the potential dangers in the proposed means of enforcement. Having SOPA pulled and PIPA put on the shelf is an important step, but it's not exactly a time to celebrate. The Internet community needs to remain vigilant and engaged with Congress to help create legislation that reinforces the freedom of the Internet and protects the rights of intellectual property owners.

These bills have not been forgotten by the members who introduced them for consideration and vote, and they will likely evolve into new proposals with the same intent.

Our legal team and management team will maintain our steadfast opposition to these two bills in their current form, and as similar legislation is proposed, we will fill you in on what's being considered. In the meantime, take a few minutes to visit http://savehosting.org/ and TechAmerica to learn more about what our industry is concerned about.

Last week, I explained SoftLayer's stance against SOPA and mentioned that SOPA would essentially require service providers like SoftLayer to "break the Internet" in response to reports of "infringing sites." The technical readers in our audience probably acknowledged the point and moved on, but our non-technical readers (and some representatives in Congress) might have gotten a little confused by the references to DNS, domains and IP addresses.

Given how pervasive the Internet is in our daily lives, you shouldn't need to be "a techie" to understand the basics of what makes the Internet work ... And given the significance of the SOPA legislation, you should understand where the bill would "break" the process. Let's take a high level look at how the Internet works, and from there, we can contrast how it would work if SOPA were to pass.

The Internet: How Sites Are Delivered

You access a device connected in some way to the Internet. This device can be a cell phone, a computer or even a refrigerator. You are connected to the Internet through an Internet Service Provider (ISP) which recognizes that you will be accessing various sites and services hosted remotely. Your ISP manages a network connected to the other networks around the globe ("inter" "network" ... "Internet").

You enter a domain name or click a URL (for this example, we'll use http://www.softlayer.com since we're biased to that site).

Your ISP will see that you want to access "www.softlayer.com" and will immediately try to find someone/something that knows what "www.softlayer.com" means ... This search is known as an NS (name server) lookup. In this case, it will find that "www.softlayer.com" is associated with several name servers.

The first of these four name servers to respond with additional information about "softlayer.com" will be used. Domains are typically required to be associated with two or three name servers to ensure if one is unreachable, requests for that domain name can be processed by another.

The name server has Domain Name System (DNS) information that maps "www.softlayer.com" to an Internet Protocol (IP) address. When a domain name is purchased and provisioned, the owner will associate that domain name with an authoritative DNS name server, and a DNS record will be created with that name server linking the domain to a specific IP address. Think of DNS as a phone book that translates a name into a phone number for you.

When the IP address you reach sees that you requested "www.softlayer.com," it will find the files/content associated with that request. Multiple domains can be hosted on the same IP address, just as multiple people can live at the same street address and answer the phone. Each IP address only exists in a single place at a given time. (There are some complex network tricks that can negate that statement, but in the interest of simplicity, we'll ignore them.)

When the requested content is located (and generated by other servers if necessary), it is returned to your browser. Depending on what content you are accessing, the response from the server can be very simple or very complex. In some cases, the request will return a single HTML document. In other cases, the content you access may require additional information from other servers (database servers, storage servers, etc.) before the request can be completely fulfilled. In this case, we get HTML code in return.

Your browser takes that code and translates the formatting and content to be displayed on your screen. Often, formatting and styling of pages will be generated from a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) referenced in the HTML code. The purpose of the style sheet is to streamline a given page's code and consolidate the formatting to be used and referenced by multiple pages of a given website.

The HTML code will reference sources for media that may be hosted on other servers, so the browser will perform the necessary additional requests to get all of the media the website is trying to show. In this case, the most noticeable image that will get pulled is the SoftLayer logo from this location: http://static2.softlayer.com/images/layout/logo.jpg

When the HTML is rendered and the media is loaded, your browser will probably note that it is "Done," and you will have successfully navigated to SoftLayer's homepage.

If SOPA were to pass, the process would look like this:

The Internet: Post-SOPA

You access a device connected in some way to the Internet.

You enter a domain name or click a URL (for this example, we'll use http://www.softlayer.com since we're biased to that site).

*The Change*

Before your ISP runs an NS lookup, it would have to determine whether the site you're trying to access has been reported as an "infringing site." If http://www.softlayer.com was reported (either legitimately or illegitimately) as an infringing site, your ISP would not process your request, and you'd proceed to an error page. If your ISP can't find any reference to the domain an infringing site, it would start looking for the name server to deliver the IP address.

SOPA would also enforce filtering from all authoritative DNS provider. If an ISP sends a request for an infringing site to the name server for that site, the provider of that name server would be forced to prevent the IP address from being returned.

One additional method of screening domains would happen at the level of the operator of the domain's gTLD. gTLDs (generic top-level domains) are the ".____" at the end of the domain (.com, .net, .biz, etc.). Each gTLD is managed by a large registry organization, and a gTLD's operator would be required to prevent an infringing site's domain from functioning properly.

If the gTLD registry operator, your ISP and the domain's authoritative name server provider agree that the site you're accessing has not been reported as an infringing site, the process would resume the pre-SOPA process.

The proponents of SOPA are basically saying, "It's difficult for us to keep up with and shut down all of the instances of counterfeiting and copyright infringement online, but it would be much easier to target the larger sites/providers 'enabling' users to access that (possible) infringement." Right now, the DMCA process requires a formal copyright complaint to be filed for every instance of infringement, and the providers who are hosting the content on their network are responsible for having that content removed. That's what our abuse team does full-time. It's a relatively complex process, but it's a process that guarantees us the ability to investigate claims for legitimacy and to hear from our customers (who hear from their customers) in response to the claims.

SOPA does not allow for due process to investigate concerns. If a site is reported to be an infringing site, service providers have to do everything in their power to prevent users from getting there.

SoftLayer manages more than 100,000 servers in thirteen data centers around the world. We have more than 23,000 customers, and those customers are responsible for millions of websites (which get billions of pageviews every month). We're one of the largest hosting providers in the world, and we want to talk a little about the Stop Online Piracy Act (H.R. 3261 or "SOPA").

Many in our industry have already commented (and in some cases, "changed their minds") on SOPA and its equally evil twin, the PROTECT IP Act ("PIPA") in the Senate, but we wanted to share our perspective on the legislation. Even with these Dudley-Do-Right, Goody-Two-Shoes titles and their ambitious goals, SoftLayer opposes these bills in their current forms because they expose innocent and law-abiding hosting companies to uncertain liabilities.

Because this legislation has gotten quite a bit of attention in the past few months, you're probably already familiar with it, but if you haven't paid much attention, we can give you a quick summary: As you can read in the name of the bill, SOPA is being proposed to "Stop Online Piracy." SOPA is under consideration by the House Judiciary Committee, and its intent is to provide additional enforcement tools to combat foreign 'rogue' websites that are dedicated to copyright infringement or counterfeiting. That's a great goal, and SoftLayer does not oppose the intent of the Act ... As you saw from Kevin Hazard's blog post a few weeks ago, we have a team of people working all the time to track down and immediately address any violations of our terms of service (including copyright infringement), so we wholeheartedly agree that copyright infringement and counterfeiting are bad.

The way SOPA tries to address the problem is where we disagree with the bill, so let's talk about the most pertinent part of the bill for a service provider like SoftLayer. If SOPA were to pass, when a case of infringement is reported, we would have to "take such measures as [we determine] to be the least burdensome, technically feasible, and reasonable means designed to prevent access by [our] subscribers located within the United States to the foreign infringing site that is subject to the order."

What that means: We would be forced to turn off our customers' access to a small piece of the Internet.

How are we to do that? Well the "least burdensome, technically feasible, and reasonable means designed to prevent access" are not made clear, but most of the discussions about the bill have focused on changing the way the Doman Name System (DNS) resolves to an "infringing site." We'd be more or less ordered to break DNS ... DNS was designed to simply, accurately and quickly match a domain name with the IP address that domain's owner provides, and if SOPA were to pass, we'd have to tell DNS to behave correctly for every site EXCEPT the reported infringing sites. Again, that's not spelled out in the legislation, so it's like being given a job by someone who has no idea how to do the job nor whether the job is even possible to successfully complete.

And that's all assuming that the order to suspend access to an "infringing site" is legitimate. Many of the organizations that oppose SOPA have explained possible scenarios where orders could be filed under the guise of preventing copyright infringement. A competing site/business could claim:

"the operator of the site operates the site with the object of promoting, or has promoted, its use to carry out acts that constitute a violation of section 501 or 1201 of title 17, United States Code, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster such violation."

In another scenario, a copyright holder could pull the trigger on an order simply at the thought that a user could infringe on a copyright on/via the "infringing site."

When the United States House of Representatives reconvenes after its winter recess, we will be watching intently with hopes that the Internet's response to the bill has effectively derailed it in its current form. As SoftLayer General Council Suzy Fulton mentioned in her post about Texas House Bill 1841, we've been working with an industry group called TechAmerica which submitted a letter to Congress about SOPA and many of the issues that could negatively affect our industry. Additionally, we've gotten involved with SaveHosting.org to speak out against laws that can hurt our customers.

As discussions continue about SOPA, we'll look for opportunities to share more of our insight with you here on our blog. Please let us know your thoughts about the legislation below.

For better or worse, one of the most engaging posts on the SoftLayer Blog is "We are a No-Spam Network," written by Jacob Linscott in June 2007. When it was posted, it celebrated a completely clear Spamhaus listing page – quite an accomplishment for a large hosting provider (for reasons I'll illustrate below). Since the post was published, it has become a hotbed of conversation about any and all abuse-related issues. Google "SoftLayer SPAM," and you'll see the post show up as the second result, so a lot of Internet passers-by will come across the post and use the comment section as a platform to share abuse-related concerns they have for us.

That engagement is a double-edge sword: It's good because we hear the concerns people have. It's bad because the post was meant to be a celebration of the continuous work that the abuse department does, and uninitiated visitors seem to consider it a unilateral claim that we've beaten spam once and for all. In the course of responding to comments on that post, I shared an analogy to convey what it's like to run abuse for a large hosting provider:

Scenario

Let's say you're the security manager for a huge mall. This mall has 100,000 stores with people walking in and out 24x7x365. In this scenario, there are "good guys" and "bad guys" who walk into and out of the mall, and every person looks exactly the same. Some of those people are store owners while others are customers of those stores. As the security manager for the mall, you want to maintain the safest, most well-maintained mall in the world, so when you find bad guys walking in and out of your mall, you do everything you can to kick them out and keep them out. Sometimes those bad guys are store owners who attract and send the wrong crowd; sometimes they are bad guy customers of a good guy store owner.

How would you manage your mall? It's not possible to differentiate whether a store owner will be a good guy or a bad guy when they're applying to lease space in your mall, so you can't "keep the bad guys out" in that regard. You can't have a security team of 100,000 people monitoring what's happening in those 100,000 stores, much less have someone individually check the millions of visitors streaming in and out of the stores. What's a security manager to do?

If you look at how Las Vegas casinos address that concern, it's clear that your best bet is to install security cameras and have a team monitoring them all the time. You might not be able to watch everything at the same time, but you can document what's happening around your mall and respond if you notice something unusual (or if someone calls in to report that they've seen bad guys coming from a store in your mall).

That's the position we're in.

SoftLayer Abuse Team

SoftLayer's network is the mall, the stores are servers, the store owners are our customers (who are often responsible for several "stores"), and the good guys and bad guys are traffic into and out of the network. We try to differentiate good guys and bad guys, but even if we know that all good guys have purple eyes and all bad guys have neon green eyes, it's still difficult to look 26,000+ store owners in the eye every day as they're walking into and out of the mall.

We staff a team of people intent on clearing the bad guys from our mall, and we know that even though good guy store owners may inadvertently host their own bad guy customers, they want to remove those customers from their store as well, so they appreciate us helping them pinpoint those customers so they can be removed.

We keep an eye on our security cameras and get our security guards to the stores where bad guys are reported as quickly as possible. If no one reports that the people coming out of store #73,403 are all bad guys, it's hard for us to know that they aren't good guys ... Which is why we encourage anyone and everyone to report abuse-related concerns to abuse@softlayer.com so we can mobilize our security force.

As Edmund Burke once said, "When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle." Or more colloquially, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

Given that illustration, the abuse team deserves a LOT of credit for the work they do behind the scenes. They are constantly investigating reports and working with customers to get remove any and all content that violate SoftLayer's MSA, and too often, that can be a thankless job. Fighting abuse is an ongoing process, and while the nature of the beast might suggest the overall war will never be won, we're always getting faster and stronger, so the individual battles are easier and easier to win.